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Lung cancer accounts for about 27 percent of all cancer deaths and is by far the leading cause of cancer death among men and women. Each year, more people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast, and prostate cancers combined.

Innovation

In the last two years, Dr. Sunil Lalla has used a procedure called navigational bronchoscopy to examine the major air passages of the lungs through a thin, lighted tube called a bronchoscope. Doctors use bronchoscopies to evaluate the lungs and collect small tissue samples — called biopsies — to diagnose lung disease and lung cancer.

He said the success rates have increased from 45 to 80 percent in lung cancer detection.

“It’s definitely a huge help to us,” he said. “It’s familiar to a GPS. We can plan before we scope into the lung, whether we go right or left.”

Dr. Lalla said this procedure is less invasive and also helps destroy the least amount of the good lung because markers are put around the tumor.

Lung cancer is curable if discovered early before it has a chance to travel (spread) to other sites.

Tumors are usually discovered late. Because they are in the chest, they often have the chance to grow and spread before symptoms develop. Treatment in these cases can help to slow progression, reduce symptoms and improve the patient’s quality of life.

For individuals at high risk for developing lung cancer, low dose CT scan screenings can result in early detection and cure.

Evidence supporting CT screenings has resulted in Medicare issuing a recommendation to cover them. Health systems and hospitals around the country are putting programs in place, anticipating coverage with reimbursement will start in 2016.

Many effective treatments exist for early stage lung cancer. Previously, extensive surgery was the only option. Today, less extensive surgery using more sophisticated and more precise techniques, or radiation therapy that is very precisely directed to the tumor have improved treatment. Both seem to be equally effective, giving patients a choice.

Did you know?

Tobacco use is the No. 1 cause of lung cancer, but people who don’t smoke may get lung cancer too. People can get it from radon, asbestos and diesel exhaust. More than 40,000 cases of lung cancer are diagnosed each year in non-smokers.

Most lung cancers do not cause symptoms until they have spread too far to be cured. But symptoms do occur in some people with early lung cancer. Some of the most common symptoms of lung cancer are:

•A cough that does not go away or gets worse

•Chest pain that is often worse with deep breathing, coughing, or laughing

•Weight loss and loss of appetite

•Coughing up blood or rust-colored sputum (spit or phlegm)

•Infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia that don’t go away or keep coming back.

There are three main types of lung cancer — non-small lung cancer; small-cell lung cancer and lung carcinoid tumor. About 85 percent of lung cancers are non-small cell lung cancers.

Lung cancers are thought to start as areas of pre-cancerous changes in the lung. The first changes in the genes (DNA) inside the lung cells may cause the cells to grow faster. These cells may look a bit abnormal if seen under a microscope, but at this point they do not form a mass or tumor. They cannot be seen on an X-ray and they do not cause symptoms.

Over time, the abnormal cells may acquire other gene changes, which cause them to progress to true cancer. As a cancer develops, the cancer cells may make chemicals that cause new blood vessels to form nearby. These blood vessels nourish the cancer cells, which can continue to grow and form a tumor large enough to be seen on imaging tests such as X-rays.

Statistics

•An estimated 12,000 people will die of lung cancer in 2015.

•There are an estimated 221,200 new cases of lung cancer (115,610 in men and 105,590 in women) in 2015.

•In 2015, there’s an estimated 158,040 deaths from lung cancer (86,380 in men and 71,660 among women).

•Lung cancer mainly occurs in older people. About two out of three people diagnosed with lung cancer are 65 or older; fewer than 2 percent of all cases are found in people younger than 45. The average age at the time of diagnosis is about 70.

•Overall, the chance that a man will develop lung cancer in his lifetime is about 1 in 13; for a woman, the risk is about 1 in 16. These numbers include both smokers and non-smokers. For smokers the risk is much higher, while for non-smokers the risk is lower.

•Ten years after quitting, the risk of dying from lung cancer is about half that of a person who is still smoking.

•Black men are about 20 percent more likely to develop lung cancer than white men. The rate is about 10 percent lower in black women than in white women.